Shadowed Souls Part 3
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: ext in The Blood Will Tell Series. In every generation there is the Chosen One. Until Buffy Summers turned the Slayers into a franchise. And did we really expect Evil to simply shrug its shoulders and say, 'Oh well, it was nice while it lasted?
1. Chapter 1

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1. _

**SHADOWED SOULS Part 3 **

**Chapter 1**

Terri slipped and went down on one knee, but Aliesha sprang forward, deflecting the arm with a swift slice of the axe that bit deep and caused yellow blood to spurt from the injured limb.

The Gra'ak shrieked in fury, trying futilely to monitor all its attackers at once, recognising Faith as the leader, but unable to get to her with the other attackers harrying it. The death of Fallon Mady and the inevitability of another attack had prompted the apprentice Slayers' trainers to revise their pupils' battle tactics with Buffy Summers' full approval; rigid adherence to outdated traditions simply for tradition's sake had been a characteristic of the original, discredited and now mostly dead Watchers' Council.

The Gospel according to St. Xander was simple: Buffy, and Faith, had had to fight such monsters as the Gra'ak alone, so why should the Slayers gloat about victories when they were merely part of the crowd? Each Slayer patrol had been generally accompanied by a member of the Scooby Gang to direct proceedings and this would now become a rule not a 'if we can take the time' deal. Slayers would patrol in small groups, a minimum of four to a maximum of eight, but at all times one or preferably two would not engage in the battle unless they needed to help an injured or tiring Slayer. In this way, if the fight became protracted, _their_ side would always have at least one reasonably fresh, rested combatant whereas the evil wouldn't.

Faith, Robin and Xander were out tonight on three separate patrols; Faith's group had totally unexpectedly come across this Gra'ak, a huge sort of cross between the Incredible Hulk on steroids and an ogre, but the Dark Slayer witnessed with pride how her charges had clearly been paying attention to her training techniques. With Faith and Danielle staying back as reserves, the other four had engaged the Gra'ak with skill and confidence – but not arrogance – and were wearing it down, like a lion being bested by angry wasps.

Faith dived forward in a smooth lunge as Terri, her ankle having twisted when she slipped, remembered her combat survival training and simply tucked and rolled herself out of the way of her fellow Slayers instead of panicking because she couldn't put weight on her leg. Without a hitch, four Slayers continued to attack the Gra'ak as if the change in personnel had been planned weeks in advance, Faith having the advantage of being fresh to the fight.

It roared, a wave of stinking, fetid breath making their eyes water, unable to break through the encircling cordon of girls and with the only possible vulnerability, Terri, having got herself well clear and out of the way. Faith noted Aliesha's intent expression as she whirled her scimitar and made a mental note to recommend to Buffy more responsibility for the Haarlem-born Slayer. Aliesha was smart without thinking she knew it all, a savage fighter who nevertheless didn't let the rage cloud her thinking, confident without being conceited. They needed as many new teachers and Slayer Group Leaders as they could to come through the ranks to teach the newbie Slayers still making contact, either by turning up on the doorstep or via phone call, mail or email.

Abruptly Faith felt as if an invisible hand had grabbed her and turned her upside down on her head before spinning her the right way up again a second later, like a child playing with an egg-timer by twisting it in its hands. She collapsed on the spongy grass of the hill like a pricked balloon so suddenly not even the Gra'ak realised what had happened for a moment.

"Danielle!" Faith's intended bark of command came out instead as a harsh, gasping exhalation of air as her limbs suddenly felt as heavy as lead and she experienced an intense compression against every inch of her skin, as if invisible elephants were trying to sit on top of her, closing her eyes as her stomach churned with nausea caused by the way the ground seemed to be undulating in waves before her sight.

The youngest of the six Slayers was there in position before Faith had finished calling her name, as well as Terri surging up and balancing one leg, ready just in case. The Gra'ak screeched again as it recognised a weak point in the corral though it didn't understand what had just happened, and it charged directly at Danielle. Having no choice, the Slayer waited to the last possible second and then somersaulted left, slicing out with the sword and scoring the Gra'ak's torso. It checked and howled, lashing out in a motion that caught Danielle a glancing blow – which nevertheless threw her a clear ten feet away to land in a winded heap.

Bellowing in pain, the Gra'ak vacillated momentarily as it fixed on Danielle's hard landing, but then it went for escape over revenge. It lumbered forward into the small gap to eviscerate the dark haired girl en route to freedom. With a desperate cry, Aliesha threw her axe at its armoured back, but the blade bounced off and only distracted it for a split-second.

Every single hair on Faith's body stood up rigidly on end, as if each individual follicle had just been plugged straight into an electric socket. Her fingers closed around the hilt of her sword and as the Gra'ak loomed, Faith powered straight up from her crouch, driving the blade up through the Gra'ak's face into its brain, killing it instantly. Rocking back, the Gra'ak teetered momentarily and then toppled backwards stone-dead with ground-shaking impact.

Followed by Faith.

The other five Slayers hastened around her. "Get. Robin." Faith ordered harshly, concentrating on keeping her laboured breathing going.

Danielle took off like a startled gazelle as Wanda, built like a linebacker, scooped the Dark Slayer up in her arms like she was a toddler, while Terri awkwardly hopped on Aliesha's back for a piggy-back ride.

"Babe!" Robin Wood strode out of the night with his group of Slayers, taking Faith into his own arms with a similar ease that Wanda had shown. A few moments later Xander and his group also arrived.

"What happened?" demanded Xander.

"It was another attack, it had to be!" Aliesha claimed.

Part of Faith was loudly declaring that the Dark Slayer did not let anyone, least of all a _guy_, carry her in his arms like some Victorian Melodrama heroine, but the majority of her was feeling _very_ peculiar, so this once she let it slide. "I went from Slayer to newborn kitten on the muscle front in about a second flat. Anyone else get whammied by the bad mojo?"

There was a chorus of negatives. "Everyone back home now," ordered Xander. "We need to let the others know."

Ten minutes into the return march, Faith felt a warm tingling in her toes that swept up her body as if she'd just downed a couple of uppers or a stiff shot of bourbon, re-energizing and revitalising her every cell. "Let me down," she urged Robin, who reluctantly let his lover go, ready to grab her if she fell, but she strode out confidently, giving everyone a helpless shrug at her abrupt return to feeling fine.

"Faith?" Buffy and Dawn hurried out from the doorway towards the Dark Slayer, who felt a curl of warmth in her stomach again at their expressions of concern.

"What happened?" Rupert Giles demanded generically of the mass of people.

Everyone gathered in the old mansion's garden courtyard as Faith, Aliesha and the others related what went down. When they finished, Giles took of his spectacles and rubbed them vigorously, nodding agreement to Aliesha: "Definitely another attack."

"Why was it just Faith?" Asked Kennedy.

"Maybe they've decided to try the 'one step at a time' approach." commented Xander, "They tried to drain six Slayers of their power at once but that failed spectacularly after only a few seconds. They've realised that maybe they were a bit over-ambitious so they've gone for the First Evil's M.O. of trying to steal each Slayer's power one by one?"

Giles nodded agreement again. "That would be the most logical scenario."

"I think so." Willow lent her concurrence to Xander's notion. "These sorts of mystical arts are complex, and if something does go wrong, you don't just go 'oops'; there's a rebounding shockwave that can knock you off your feet or even kill you. My bet is that when their attempt to drain the original six Slayers failed, they were all hit by a sort of mystical backlash shockwave that probably knocked them clear across the room they were in and broke bones…assuming they _have_ bones."

"Good." Faith muttered, "I _still _feel like I've been through the spin cycle a couple of times."

"We were damn lucky the effect only lasted a few seconds again, though." Aliesha worried, showing perception, "What if these scumbags get so they're able to knock out a Slayer's whammy for ten or fifteen minutes at a time?"

"Uh-oh." Faith stood up abruptly.

"What is it?" Buffy moved anxiously to support her.

"My Slayer power _didn't _come back to me for a good _twenty minutes_ after the attack." Faith confessed. "We were almost home when I felt it suddenly pour back into me."

"But you came back up like you were rocket-propelled." Aliesha objected. "You looked like that actor Yahoo Serious in _Young Einstein_ with his hair all electrified, and you skewered the Gra'ak like a shish-kebab and didn't even break a sweat."

"And she collapsed straight away again afterwards." Terri reminded them.

"Are you sure what you felt was your Slayer power returning?" Giles pressed Faith.

The Dark Slayer's eyes darkened with the shadows that those in the know recognised as Faith approaching a painful subject. "I'm sure."

"It was…" Buffy began softly, laying a hand on Faith's arm.

"Identical to what I experienced in the instant that Kendra died." Faith said flatly, her tone warning off further discussion of the topic.

Turning to look at Giles, Buffy said, "You suddenly get pins and needles in your toes, then this –"

"- whole warmth just surges up your legs –"

"- into your stomach and your chest –"

" -right up until you can feel every follicle in your scalp –"

" – and you feel so full of energy and light that you just _know_ - "

"- you could run and dance and fight _forever –_ "

"- and yet never, ever get tired enough to stop."

For a moment there was a respectful silence as the Slayers looked at each other with embarrassed recollection of _the_ Moment of Their Calling.

Dawn looked at Faith, "So if you _weren't_ a Slayer again for another twenty minutes, _what _was it that enabled you to skewer the Gra'ak?"

To be continued in Chapter 2…

© 2005 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	2. Chapter 2

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1. _

**SHADOWED SOULS Part 3 **

**Chapter 2**

"Kill me or release me," Wesley ordered, "because I don't have time for this." Heedless of the stake pressing into his jugular, he moved forward.

Justine backed up, lowering the stake but still looking at him like a T-Rex eyeing up the juicy humans in _Jurassic Park_; she adopted an atrocious attempt at an aristocratic English accent, "Oh come on, I bet the scar has _all _the girls just panting for a good old British jolly roger...ing."

Wesley didn't respond to this, instead reloading the spring-loaded retractable stake before pulling his jacket down to cover his forearm. He began to walk forward, but his Watcher training wouldn't quite let him just go. The Watchers _had_ been created for the Slayer, after all. "Go to Sunnydale," he advised. "What you need to know is there."

Justine snorted. "Kill vampires and demons? I think I've grasped the concept, thanks anyway."

Wesley raised one eyebrow. "Do you really think if it were _that_ simple I'd be stood in this alley today?"

"I bet the reason you're in this alley has everything to do with your pet _vampire_, and _not_ a lot to do with _Slayers_." Justine riposted. "And like I said, doing okay so far – I've dusted fifteen vamps in the three weeks I've been dumped with this gig."

Wesley paused. "You've been a Slayer for three weeks?"

"Yeah," Justine shrugged. "Silly me, decided to take your advice – never going to make that mistake again – and live a life. Nice little duplex in suburbia, wonderfully _dull_ admin job with Fox Studios, then one night – whammo – I get this cramp in my toes and _then_ I collapse on the carpet writhing with multiple-_orgasms_. When I manage to wipe the silly grin off my face and clamber back to my feet, I discover I need never worry about opening a pickle jar again, courtesy of the biceps of steel." She flexed her arm mock-dramatically like an old Mr Universe competitor.

"'The Slayer dies, the next Slayer is Called.'" Wesley unconsciously quoted the old adage. "The Oligarchs killed Fallon Mady, and you were Called. But why not when Buffy used the Scythe last year?"

"Whoa. Who? Did what?" Justine scowled.

"But being a Slayer is simple." Wesley commented blandly.

Her hand tightened round the stake again. "Maybe I should extend that scar on your neck for you."

"Maybe you should jettison that attitude you have and try to learn something for a change." Wesley retorted. "I'm not expending valuable oxygen I could be using for better things telling you this because I _like_ you. I'm a – I _was_ – a Watcher. It was my _job_ to help a Slayer."

Justine looked him up and down. "Yeah right, I've been reading those Watcher Diaries on the 'Net. Real hard life for you; talk about gift-wrapped – a bunch of guys with a legitimate reason to spend their lives ogling teenage girls."

Without a word Wesley crossed the road to his car. Before he could open the driver door, Justine was there, her face twisted like she'd just bitten into a raw lemon. "Okay! Okay! _Please_ tell me what's going on, O Oracle of all Wisdom and Knowledge."

Explaining the edited highlights about Buffy Summers, the Scythe, the First Evil and the Potentials, Wesley finished up by summarising the history of the Slayers. He mentioned the institutionalised Slayer Dana Parvati, stopping when Justine's face became stricken.

"Dreams? Race memories?" The bitter woman turned her back on him and began to walk away, hugging herself in the classic self-defence gesture.

Silently cursing the sense of duty that wouldn't just let him walk away from the psychotic woman who had, after all, slit _his_ throat and left _him_ to die, Wesley went after her. "Justine…"

"That was Julia."

"I don't understand?" Wesley waited, though he was aware of time going by – he'd just explained the Slayer _oeuvre_ and even sticking to the Cliff Notes it was a longer than ten-minute job; the defining moment of Justine Cooper's life had been the murder of her twin sister Julia by vampires. Everything she said, did and even thought revolved around that event, like planets orbiting a sun.

"Julia and I were identical twins, and I _mean _identical. Half the time not even our parents could tell us apart." Justine said quietly, staring vacantly at the LA cityscape. "We were the stereotypical peas in a pod, except for one thing - Julie's night terrors."

"She had bad dreams." It was a statement, not a question.

"She had bad _movies_ in her head – as in bring popcorn and sit down for a couple of hours – they were _narratives_ with coherent plot and dialogue." Justine grimaced. "By the time we were three, mom and dad had taken to putting the kitchen cutlery in locked drawers because they were so used to coming downstairs in the middle of the night and finding Julie standing in the middle of the kitchen, eyes wide open but staring at nothing, wielding a steak knife as she fought 'monsters' only she could see and hear. Other kids used to cry if _they_ saw a horror movie; at five years old Julie would sit there trying to give the actors instructions on how to kill the chomp thing. We had a friend, Jaycie, whose dad was some Delta Force or 'black ops' Special Forces guy – he sat there with us one day and couldn't get over this little girl having more savvy about special ops' tactics than some of the trained soldiers in his unit. When we were seven we went to Marseilles, in the south of France, for a vacation, first time ever outside the US of A – Julie suddenly started spouting French like a native, with a Breton accent no less – Brittany is in _north _west France. Scared the hell out of us."

"Is that when your parents sent her to a psychiatrist?" Wesley judged perceptively.

"Yeah. He said that Julie was otherwise healthy but incredibly over-imaginative, and she would probably grow up to be a millionaire novelist." She snorted, "In other words he had no idea what was going on, but by that time, Julia was learning to live with it anyway. I knew the weird dreams and her suddenly acting as if she were somebody else entirely never went away, but from that age she disguised them so well that half the time she didn't even notice herself. Mum and Dad and our family were just so relieved she'd 'grown out' of the 'phase' finally they ignored her occasional slips that showed she hadn't."

"And after she died, you began to dream…?"

"No. _Those_ blood-drenched, starkly terrifying fun-fests started last year. I was just trying to deal with them when I got all Slayered."

Wesley put the pieces together. Julia had been the Potential, but to paraphrase Spike, until and unless she became a Slayer, she was just a slightly unusual Happy Meal on legs, like the rest of humanity. When Buffy used the Scythe, Julia was already long dead; the extremely close match of their DNA meant that Justine had been caught by the mystical ripples caused by Willow's sorcery with the Scythe.

"So…I'm Justine, the Vampire Slayer." She smiled at him, suggestively. "Maybe you ought to tell Angel to be careful."

"Why? There's nothing for him to worry about here." Wesley slapped her down. "Go to Sunnydale, don't go to Sunnydale, I don't have time to care."

"Surely _you're_ my Watcher?" Justine said coolly.

Unable to avoid giving forth a startled laugh, Wesley looked at her incredulously. "I _don't_ think so."

"It doesn't strike you as a bit coincidental that when this Fallon girl was killed the next Slayer Called just happened to be a Potential on _your_ doorstep: Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Watcher?"

"I'm not a Watcher anymore."

"Maybe you're supposed to be."

Wesley moved into her path and faced her, not backing down from the mockery in her green eyes. "You think _you_ have some profound insight?"

Justine folded her arms. "You're always singing from the Redemption song sheet, Wes' – on _Angel's_ behalf. Holtz constantly said: _Know thine enemy,_ so last year I dug up the skinny on you, _old boy_. You didn't _leave_ the Watchers - you were _thrown out. _Tell me, what happens if all this scuttlebutt going around the demon underground about Angel actually _does _come off and he actually gets to go Pinocchio and become a real boy - again? What do _you _do then?"

"That's irrelevant."

"In the Big Picture, I'm sure it is, but it's sure as hell not irrelevant to _you_. You've got a second chance at being a _proper_ Watcher standing right here in front you. A golden opportunity to collect brownie points, the chance to _prove_ you can walk the walk as well as talk the talk on a plate. This is your chance to stick two fingers up at the Watchers Council and wave the big banner: REDEMPTION for _yourself_ and not just Angel. Are you really just going to walk away? _Can _you?"

To be continued in Chapter 3…

© 2005 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	3. Chapter 3

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1. _

**SHADOWED SOULS Part 3 **

**Chapter 3 **

The morning sun was mid-sky when Philip George Hewitt went through LAX Immigration control from the 8:30am London Heathrow flight. Nobody paid him any attention as he collected his single large suitcase from the carousel because he was one of those people who are instantly forgettable. Of medium height, his hair would be called 'straw-coloured', his eyes an ordinary grey in a round, pleasant but unremarkable face. He looked exactly like any one of a thousand other businessmen who flew into and out of the United States every day.

Which was why he was such a successful hired killer.

He wasn't _the _Philip George Hewitt of course, or even _a _Philip George Hewitt. This particular Philip George Hewitt had been born in Bayswater, London, thirty-four years ago, and died of measles seven months later. His travel documents stated that he was a loss adjuster for the international firm of Net Corp (UK) Plc. Its London HQ was Net Corp's nerve centre for offices all over the world and at any given time, some of its executive staff could be found in a major airport. Hewitt was indeed on the firm's payroll, but you would never find anyone amongst the company's 2,322 employees who knew him personally. His wallet contained pictures of his wife, son and daughter, none of whom even knew he existed, the shots being taken randomly in three separate countries with a telephoto lens camera. The Hewitt family who lived at his London address were indeed Philip Hewitt, his wife, son and daughter, but they likewise had no knowledge of the existence of _this_ Philip.

He had lived as Philip George Hewitt for eight years, and for five years before that in Berlin as an accountant named Eric Wilhelm Schauffenberg for a globally successful soft-drinks company and for three years before that as a French-Canadian insurance loss adjustor named Marcel Antoine Lecque in Montreal.

His speciality was in 'invisible' contract killings. Unlike Julius Caesar he did not come, see and conquer – then depart with haste that might get him noticed. Instead he seeped gradually into the victim's sphere of existence like rising damp, living for months or even years in one persona.

The inconvenient geriatric relative whose too long life was delaying a much needed inheritance would eventually suffer a fatal fall down a flight of stairs, or would be found sitting dead in an armchair after doing the 'befuddled elderly' thing and turning on the gas cooker but forgetting to light it. For the in-the-way spouse and the attendant risk of the surviving husband or wife being suspect, his personal favourite was to recommend that the spouse who had hired him buy his or her husband or wife something he or she had always wanted. The husband's 'golf-buggy' style lawnmower or the wife's brand new hair tongs could then be guaranteed to have incorrectly wired electrics, or some other fault that would prove fatal. The toddler who was costing far too much in alimony ended up in a garden pond, the extraneous sibling who stood to share some financial bounty had a timely fatal accident, a troublesome business partner would have an unsurprising stress-induced coronary on vacation…

His business trip visa lasted a month, not that he expected it to take so long. One adolescent girl was not something to even think about much – teenagers daily put themselves in all sorts of near-fatal peril…

To be continued in Shadowed Souls Chapter 4…

© 2005 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


End file.
